Large-scale plantations have resulted in Cambodia exhibiting one of the world’s highest rates of deforestation. This deforestation was perhaps the inevitable outcome of the rapaciously wasteful logging operations that occurred during the 1990s as the countryside was integrated into the global economy after decades of civil war and sanction-induced isolation. The major driver of forest policy during the 1990s, and now, concerns elites who deploy the state to manage and exploit Cambodia’s natural resources.